GLOBAL MARKETS-Yen climbs after BoJ pledges to buy assets

* Yen advance expected to be short-lived
* Bank of Japan makes open-ended commitment to buy assets
from 2014
* BoJ doubles inflation target to 2 percent
* Euro rises versus dollar; German investor sentiment up
sharply in January
* Stocks mixed, Treasuries turn higher after weaker U.S.
home sales
By Ellen Freilich
NEW YORK, Jan 22 (Reuters) - The yen rose to a three-day
high against the dollar on Tuesday after the Bank of Japan said
its open-ended commitment to buy assets would kick in only next
year, disappointing those who expected more aggressive monetary
easing.
Global stock markets were mixed. Japanese equities
and world indices rose on the BoJ news, but European shares
dipped on a prospective price war in the French
telecommunications sector.
U.S. stocks were mostly higher after ending last week at
five-year highs, but gains were limited with investors cautious
as the earnings season picks up. Tech companies Google Inc
, International Business Machines and Texas
Instruments are set to report after Wall Street's close,
ahead of Apple Inc's earnings release on Wednesday.
The euro pared sharp losses against the yen and
the dollar after a German ZEW survey showed economic
sentiment at its highest since May 2012.
But the key development was the Bank of Japan's plan to lift
its inflation target and buy assets. Japan's central bank, under
intense political pressure to overcome deflation, doubled its
inflation target to 2 percent.
The BoJ also said it had decided to switch to an open-ended
approach to buying assets each month next year, setting no
deadline for completing the purchases.
"The yen strengthened after weakening since mid-November in
anticipation of the BoJ's plan to set a target of 2 percent for
inflation and do unlimited quantitative easing until it gets
there," said Briefing.com macro analyst Jonathan Garber.
Though the yen appreciated on Tuesday, Omer Esiner, chief
market analyst at Commonwealth Foreign Exchange in Washington,
said its medium-term trend downward was intact.
Current BoJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa's term ends in April
and since he is expected to be replaced by someone whose stance
on aggressive policy easing matches that of Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe, markets expect the yen to weaken.
On Tuesday, however, the dollar was down 1.1 percent against
the yen at 88.56.
The euro was down 1.3 percent on the day at 117.78 yen,
though off a session low of 117.31 yen. The euro was hurt by a
German newspaper report saying Germany's regulator had ordered
large banks to simulate a break-up.
Against the dollar, the euro was down 0.1 percent at stood
at $1.3300.
The euro hit a near 10-month high a week ago and some
strategists said it would likely stay firm as concerns around
the euro zone crisis ease. Supporting that view was a
surprisingly strong German ZEW reading on investor sentiment, a
sign the euro zone crisis was no longer hitting Europe's largest
economy as hard as it did last year.
But Douglas Cote, chief market strategist at ING U.S.
Investment Management, with $170 billion in assets under
management, said the euro's rise since the start of the year
could pose a problem for the euro zone and the global economy.
"Europe has a growth crisis and this race by central banks
to ease gives Europe much less room to do the same," he said.
"Their currency is rising at the absolute worst possible time,
hurting its global competitiveness."
That could impair U.S. corporations' earnings growth, Cote
said.
"Half the revenues of U.S. corporations are from overseas
and if important economies like Europe have serious problems,
overall S&P 500 Q4 earnings growth expectations - at about 2
percent - could very easily be a miss," he said. "That would not
bode well for stock prices."
U.S. housing data has surprised on the positive side over
the last few months, but news that U.S. existing home sales fell
in December temporarily weakened stock prices. It also allowed
safe-haven U.S. debt to erase early losses and move higher.
Analysts said stock investors held back on making large bets
before a batch of corporate earnings.
Both the Dow and S&P 500 closed at their highest levels
since December 2007 on Friday, spurred by a strong start to
earnings season. U.S. markets were closed on Monday.
Those indices were in the plus column again on Tuesday.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up 41.43 points,
or 0.3 percent, at 13,691.05. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index
was up 3.33 points, or 0.22 percent, at 1,489.32. The
Nasdaq Composite Index was down 1.49 points, or 0.05
percent, at 3,133.17.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury note was up 3/32, its yield
easing to 1.84 percent from 1.85 percent on Friday.
European shares, testing two-year highs in recent days,
weakened. Telecom shares weakened after Vivendi's SFR
mobile operator said it was cutting prices by as much as 25
percent.
The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 closed down 0.1
percent at 1,165.49.
Frankfurt's DAX fell as much as 1.4 percent on the
talk but then erased about half of that loss.
The MSCI world index was up 0.17 percent.
Brent crude rose 0.64 percent to $112.43 a barrel,
and gold stood at $1,694.19 per ounce. Growing confidence
in the strength of China's economic recovery pushed copper
up 1.05 percent to $8,139.75 a tonne.
Bond market investors also gobbled up a new 10-year Spanish
bond, its first since November 2011, as the latest evidence of
rising confidence following the European Central Bank's promise
to buy Spain's bonds if necessary.